STRUCTURED BLOGGING ANNOUNCEMENT... CO-SPONSORED BY GOINGON NETWORKS

The official announcement is being held at Syndicate conference today at 5:00pm. This was Marc Canter's idea to create this standard to make blogging easier. Best described from the organization's site:

Structured Blogging will make it easy to create, edit and maintain different kinds of blog posts. The major difference is the structure will let you add specific styles to each type. For example, you'll be able to add links and pictures to spruce up your movie reviews. They will look completely different from, say, your calendar entries. Better yet, someone looking for a review of the movie Titanic will be likely to find your post about it.

The contributions for this initiative came from PubSub, Broadband Mechanics (Marc's consulting shop), and GoingOn Networks. Marc rounded up a great list of participants for this initiative which you can check out here (with a blurb about GoingOn). Funny thing is that we are the only company on the list that doesn't have a live product yet... sort of embarrassing :) Anyway, here is the official press release:

Broad New Initiative to Support Structured Blogging Announced
More Than 30 Companies Agree to Standardize How Web Data is Created and Organized to Develop Beneficial Consumer Applications

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Leading Web search, blog and development companies including PubSub, Bloglines, Feedster, Meetup, Sxip, CommerceNet, Broadband Mechanics and others today announced the start of an initiative to keep burgeoning structured content standards in sync at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco.

"A new era in blogging is upon us. We're expanding the ways we create, share and syndicate content -- and we want to make sure that all the emerging standards are inter-operable," said Salim Ismail, Co-Founder of PubSub Concepts, a leader of the initiative.

"The code we're submitting is for peer review," said Marc Canter, CEO of Broadband Mechanics. "We're making sure that all appropriate existing standards are being supported in this plugin 'compatibility box'".

This initiative is being launched with the release of plugins for WordPress and Moveable Type platforms. The plugins will provide bloggers the ability to create Events, Reviews, People and Group Showcases, audio and video media posts and lists. These structured blog posts can then be routed to any destination. (full release)

MORE: ZDNet's Dan Farber has more here, and so does Richard MacManus here. Greg Yardley brings up his concerns here, but if you take into consideration Marc's intent on most things he isn't in it for the money. Phil Pearson has a round up of posts here.